A typical issue that parents face is dealing with their children’s behaviors. Let’s say you are a parent of a five year old child that has just started school. She was a polite, considerate, and helpful young lady at home and in front of her teachers. However, her behavior has become inappropriate at home as it includes talking back, swearing, and discussing sex in general terms. She learned these behaviors from other children at her school.
I am not sure how I should teach her to make the right choices about right vs. wrong. She has already skipped school at the urging of her 5 year old friend. How can I help her when she is out of my supervision at school? How do I instruct to make the right decision on her own?
That is a great question. First we should discuss the fundamentals regarding this issue.
Kids, like you and me, are doing their best to succeed in life. So their behaviors are their attempts to get good results for themselves, as they themselves would define them. Those “good results” might be to satisfy basic urges such as hunger and warmth, they might be to get approval and love - from their parents, or from their friends, or they might be simply to have fun and excitement.
They will exhibit the behavior they believe will get them the need they have at that time.
They will find that their behaviors don’t always result in success. They learn from this and experiment with other behaviors until they find the ones that yield the desired result. When deciding what behavior to have we rely on experience, direction for our parents, and our skills and abilities. We create a group of behaviors that we hope will serve our needs effectively.
After experimenting we will find the behaviors that meet our needs. We will use these behaviors to get what we want. The more we achieve a good result with a behavior, the more we demonstrate that behavior.
So, your little 5 year old sweetheart is experimenting! Having just arrived at school, her world has opened to a whole new range of possible behaviors that she had never considered before! That’s pretty exciting in itself! Now, she wonders, which of these behaviors will work for me? Which will get me fun, approval, friends, love, food, whatever? So she tries them to see.
Many of these behaviors, once tried, will be abandoned. Some will be kept, and incorporated into her normal lifestyle. Which will they be? That depends on what outcomes she experiences. At this age the approval of parents is pretty important, so your response to them will certainly be an influence. But so too will be outside influences, such as explicit rewards or punishments, the approval of teachers and, of course, her friends.
You have a great deal of influence as her parent. When she is this young she will listen to you. Later on is another story. Your influence appears in two ways.
1. How you respond emotionally to her behaviors. Do you approve or disapprove of her behaviors?
2. How you control her external environment. You have the power to choose her school, neighbors, and people she will be in contact with. You are the one who can give her punishments and rewards.
Integrating what he discussed together and looking at this logically, you need to answer the following questions:
Do you think your daughter is just experimenting with her behaviors and that it will pass? If you do, then don’t worry about it. She will eventually move on to appropriate behavior. Kids tend to do mischievous things at this age and still end up to be productive adults.
Bear in mind that if you over-react to things like her swearing that may, in itself, actually make the behavior seems MORE exciting rather than less. Generally, “chilling out” is the better way to go.
If you think that her bad behavior is escalating too much then you need to do something to thwart it.
At this point you will need to rely on your judgement of the situation. Are you doing all the things you can as a parent? Make sure that you are a positive role model. Remember, you have a significant influence on her.
Then look at the school and neighborhood. Do the kids, by and large, turn out okay? Or is everyone on drugs by the time they are-?
Speak with other parents and teachers. Most schools have a “culture” and it may just be that this is the culture in this school - i.e. that lots of kids go through this phase and then settle down, rather like the toilet jokes when they are 7 and 8. Or it may be that the teachers are greatly concerned.
Sadly, you can’t watch over every outside influence in your child’s life. You also can’t be totally sure that your daughter will learn right from wrong. However, you can improve the chances of her success. Your influence is great and you should be a healthy role model for your daughter.
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